Towards Sustainable, Self-Supporting Agriculture: Biological Nitrogen Factories as a Key for Future Cropping Systems

Abstract

The LOME concept of self-sufficient agricultural systems encompasses legumes supplying nitrogen and proteins, oil-seed crops producing fuel, and methanization of biomass producing renewable energy. The benefits of introducing a legume into a crop rotation have been widely discussed but there has been no comparison of long-term yield trends and few long-term experiments on the interaction between biological and mineral sources of nitrogen (N).